Men's squash wins two of three at team championships

Tufts Men's squash finished its team season last weekend with three matches in the College Squash Association's (CSA) Team Championships. Despite a 9-0 loss against Franklin and Marshall, a 5-4 win against Stanford and a 6-3 victory over Rochester put Tufts over the .500 mark (9-8) to finish as the 19th ranked team in the country and third in the Summers division of the tournament.

Tufts started the tournament Friday as the fourth seeded team in the Summers division with a match against number three Stanford. The Jumbos came into the match having dropped a close 5-4 match to Stanford earlier in the season at the Dartmouth Invitational Tournament on Nov. 23.

While Stanford won matches at the numbers one, two, and three spots, the middle of the Jumbo lineup proved to be too much for the Cardinals as Tufts took victories in the four through eight spots. Youth carried the Tufts team with wins by freshmen Derek Lee, Tom Keidel, Pranav Tripathi, and Dan Karlin. Junior Jordan Kolasinski added a win at the number seven spot to put Tufts over the top in the team's first round win.

"It was clutch. We all came through when we had to," said Keidel, who extended his winning streak to five matches. "We each had a game plan going into our matches and we stuck to them. That's what squash is all about."

Keidel added, "It all came together for us. The Stanford match was a microcosm of what our season was about. [The match] represented our depth as a team; it went all the way down to the bottom of the lineup."

The win over Stanford put Tufts in the winners' bracket of the tournament and into a match against number one seeded Franklin and Marshall on Saturday. However, the Diplomats overwhelmed Tufts, sending the Jumbos into a playoff match with Rochester for a third place finish in the division.

"The fact that we played such a long match against Stanford on Friday drained us physically and emotionally," senior captain Chris Choi said. "The next morning we were feeling pretty flat."

Rochester had put up a strong showing in the tournament coming into Saturday's match. The Yellowjackets had defeated favored MIT 6-3 in the first round before falling to Colby 7-2 in the winners bracket. The pairing Sunday was a rematch from earlier in the month, when the Jumbos defeated Rochester 5-4 on Feb. 2.

The Jumbos, who had several key injuries during their first meeting with Rochester, came to play. "It was really close early in the season, but this time we were all healthy," Keidel said. "We sensed the urgency of the moment."

The Tufts' senior captains took the top two matches as Choi won a tight match, 3-2, over Rochester's Allen Fitzsimmons and Nathan Anderson followed suit at the two spot to pick up a 3-1 victory. Rochester took the three, four, and five matches, but Tripathi, Kolasinski, Karlin and Jesse Goldberg picked it up in the six through nine matches to give Tufts the 6-3 win.

Anderson was surprised by his team's ability to bounce back from the tough loss and by its endurance in the third straight day of tournament play.

"We all were pretty motivated for that match," Anderson said. "In years past we were all tired by Sunday [of the tournament,] but this year we really wanted to do well."

Tufts' finish secured it a top 20 ranking for the third year in a row, and gave the Jumbos their second winning season in three years.

"I think we are in the right place in the rankings, it is where we want to be," Anderson said.

Choi was especially excited that his team finished above Stanford and MIT, two of its biggest rivals.

"In my four years of squash here it was the best season I've had," Choi said. "We had some ups and downs. In the beginning, it was a freshman group trying to improve, and later in the season it came down to everyone being on the same page."

The CSA tournament was an especially important event for the senior captain.

"In the end, everyone had to play their absolute best," Choi said. "Seeing how we did this past weekend shows how everyone improved. We peaked when we wanted to."